On Coaching and Perfection

Vince Lombardi once conceded that “Perfection is not obtainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich is famous for demanding perfection from everyone on his roster, whether future hall-of-famers or walk-on practice-squad players. The 2013-14 San Antonio Spurs weren’t perfect, but they achieved a unique level of excellence on the way to winning Popovich his fifth NBA championship. Up against the dominant player of the modern era, the Spurs reminded the NBA just how unbeatable a seamlessly cohesive team can be. You can bet Joe Lacob, Bob Myers and Steve Kerr were taking notes.

From one perspective, the Warriors have completely missed the moral of the Spurs’ championship story. Popovich — the archetypal grinder, scowling his way from a small college coaching job the the NBA Finals — leveraged every year of coaching experience to craft the current Spurs team into an unstoppable force. He kept his veterans rested yet focused, charged the supporting cast with confidence and intensity, and assembled a dominant NBA player from Kawhi Leonard’s raw talent and burning desire to improve. He then bound them all together with a beautiful motion offense and endlessly adaptable defense, allowing any player from 1 to 12 on the depth chart to make meaningful contributions at a moment’s notice. The Spurs’ success was not the work of a precocious beginner, but a well-aged master at the peak of his powers.

In hiring Steve Kerr — who will coach his first NBA game in October 2014 — the Warriors are about as far away as you can get from Popovich’s battle-tested savvy. It doesn’t matter how many pages of notes Kerr produced at his interview, it’s all theory and no practice until he stands up on the sidelines at Oracle Arena. There will be an incredibly steep learning curve and — like Mark Jackson before him — I expect there will be growing pains. Instead of Kerr, the Warriors could have had their choice of a number of veteran NBA coaches with winning records and proven systems. Those coaches would have had the advantage of focusing immediately on the more advanced aspects of coaching — the stuff Popovich does so well — while Kerr will start from scratch, learning how to walk before he can coach his team to run.

But that comparison of Popovich and the Warriors’ rookie head coach misses what makes Popovich so special. There are plenty of re-tread coaches looking for their next opportunity to return to the sidelines, but simply because they have years of experience does not mean they have what it takes to lead a team to the championship. They’re too one-dimensional, too focused on certain technical aspects of the game or not focused enough on them. They want too much authority or don’t command enough respect. Joe Lacob and Bob Myers hired Steve Kerr because they hope that he has the “it” that has made Popovich such a success — the hunger for perfection, and the personal and intellectual tools to transfer that hunger to a team of young millionaires being pulled in countless directions by other forces.

With Kerr (and previously with Jackson), the Warriors are betting that the special characteristic that separates coaches like Popovich from the also-rans is something other than Xs and Os knowledge gained from years on the bench. They Warriors will give Kerr time to obtain that knowledge over the course of his five-year deal (and hopefully from a staff of best-and-brightest assistants, like David Blatt, Chip Engelland and Ron Adams). What they’re really hoping is that Kerr has the same tireless intolerance for failure that made Popovich such a fearsome leader, and the ability to relate to players that allowed Popovich to hold his team together while demanding so much from them.

In hindsight, given those desired characteristics, you can see why Lacob and company were tempted by the Mark Jackson experiment. Jackson has an undeniable charisma that completely reinvented the mood in the Warriors locker room. He got the job by pushing his logic-be-damned optimism for the Warriors’ then-flawed roster while other candidates expressed reasonable skepticism. He took a team that expected failure and convinced them that they couldn’t lose. The Warriors rode Jackson’s relentless confidence to the second round last year and an improbable game seven this year. That’s an intangible skill — beyond any Xs and Os knowledge — that shouldn’t be discounted. But self-belief isn’t what makes Popovich one of sport’s best coaches. If anything, it’s the opposite.

Popovich has succeeded over the past 18 years because he’s picked at the flaws of even his championship rosters. He’s doubted that they were good enough, even when they’ve delivered the NBA’s best records and MVP performances. He’s challenged them to play smarter, harder and more cohesively. The end result is what we’ve been fortunate enough to witness over the past 10 days — effortless ball-movement, dead-eye shooting, seamless defensive rotations and series-defining performances from mid-rotation players. Popovich saw a Spurs team last year that came seconds away from winning a championship, and was convinced that the team could be better. It only took him five games to prove to the world that he was right.

By firing Mark Jackson and hiring Steve Kerr, the Warriors are taking a risk. Joe Lacob said exactly that in an interview following Game 5. Time will tell whether the risk is a smart one, but it’s one the franchise needs to take if they’re going to breathe the rarified air of champions like Gregg Popovich and his San Antonio Spurs. Instead of rationalizing middling success, the Warriors need to chase perfection. Hopefully, along the way towards that unreachable goal, they can reach a new level of excellence.